Kidnapping On Rise In Mexico

Kidnapping for money has become almost commonplace in Mexico these days. What's shocking this time was not the crime, but the victim: the 65-year-old father of Jorge Campos, one of Mexico's most celebrated soccer stars, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

Campos flew in from Hong Kong to seek his father's release. I thank the nation for its prayers and concern, he told CBS News.

Mexicans are terrified by the kidnappings. When the economy spiraled down in the 90s, crime shot up, especially kidnapping. Mexicans forked out $200 million to kidnappers in 1997. So far, in the first two months of 1999, there have been fifty abductions.

American businessman Frederick McPhail enjoyed the good life in Mexico, until kidnappers killed his son Frederick. Several Mexican police have been arrested for the crime, three after slipping across the border into Texas.

Because the crime is so lucrative and the perpetrators are so rarely caught, kidnapping is one of Mexico's real growth industries, says American Pete Palmer, who runs a security business in Mexico City.

"More Mexicans were unemployed and underemployed and the results of that meant that more and more people were out in the street, and that meant more people were desperate," Palmer says.

After Vicente Fernandez, one of Mexico's most popular singers, made a tearful plea, he paid kidnappers $2.3 million to get his son back. Then he did what a growing number of Mexico's wealthier citizens are doing: He packed his family off to live safely in the United States.

Reported By Bill Whitaker